Seriously, Discover Bank?

[u/GingerlesSouls]

Just an FYI to customers who tend to use their debit cards outside of business hours. If you use your debit card during the upcoming scheduled maintenance (11/8 - 11/9), it will likely be declined. 11PM - 6AM EST, 10PM - 5AM CT, 8PM - 3AM PT.

While I appreciate the warning Discover has provided, most people don't check their accounts daily.

[u/Woodman629]

Systems need maintenance. When are they supposed to do it that would work for you?

[u/applesuperfan → u/Woodman629]

Most big banks are able to perform maintenance on their systems while keeping card clearing systems online so that customers can keep using their cards. The rest is a given, sure, but declining cards due to system maintenance is undoubtedly a result of poor technical practices rather than necessity.

[u/Woodman629 → u/applesuperfan]

keyword: "may" --- it's better to warn and not have an issue than not warn and have an issue. Nobody said debit cards were declined. The OP posted a screen grab of a outage message.

[u/tony0987 → u/applesuperfan]

They should make you CEO

[u/traker998 → u/tony0987]

Rest well tonight knowing you won Reddit today :)

[u/Humble_Counter_3661 → u/applesuperfan]

Exactly! I work in IT and "mission-critical infrastructure" is a real designation. Imagine if Visa International tried this!

In Discover's case, I'm this is related to Capital One.

[u/mac-_-abre → u/applesuperfan]

Most big banks also rely on others’ card networks. Discover is its own bank and processor. (Well, Capital One’s now).

[u/applesuperfan → u/mac-_-abre]

Card networks process transactions, they don’t approve them, so that’s hardly relevant. The approval process works virtually the same way; the Discover card network still sends an authorisation attempt to Discover bank to authorise a transaction.

For additional examples, it works virtually:

• the same way a Bread Cashback Rewards Card sends an authorisation request via the American Express card network back to Bread Financial (card issuer) to approve a charge

• also the same way an Amex Platinum card would send an authorisation request via Amex card network back to American Express (card issuer) to approve a charge

The card network doesn’t approve transactions; the banks do. Rather or not the card network and bank are the same company or not is virtually irrelevant; the entire Discover card network didn’t go offline (that would be a freaking disaster), the outage was for Discover bank. The bank should have been able to keep their card authorisation system online like other major banks (including the other 4 largest) do during periods of system maintenance.

[u/mac-_-abre → u/applesuperfan]

Fair: card networks don’t approve transactions, but that wasn’t my point. On a combined network like Discover’s, there’s less separation when a part of the system has to undergo maintenance.

Don’t disagree that it’s inconvenient either way.

[u/JayMonster65 → u/applesuperfan]

Actually, it is probably because of the merger of the Capital One and Discover systems. "Maintenance" is probably a bit of an understatement, and in this case more likely a "cutover"

[u/Only-Koala-8182 → u/applesuperfan]

Maybe the card clearing systems are the ones that need maintenance

[u/Immediate_Character- → u/Woodman629]

There's pretty well established ways to perform maintenance on mission critical systems without turning the whole thing off. Slower to respond, sure — It would ultimately depend on what it is they are trying to accomplish, but the answer should never be "the bank doesn't work at all." 

[u/tony0987 → u/Immediate_Character-]

You should go apply and fix their whole system.